Join the public beta for Paper Boy. The fresh news reader from the developer of BBC News Mobile

BBC News Mobile was one of your (and ours) favorite apps. Unfortunately, it was a third party development effort and was put to pasture from BBC pressure. The app had been a labor of love from developer Lawrence Gripper, our friend across the pond in the UK. Thankfully, the years of work he put into the BBC News Mobile app isn’t going to just sit around unused. He’s taken pieces of the code base to build a generic news reader called Paper Boy. You should join in on the public beta happening right now. You know where to find the link.

Paper Boy basically picks off where the BBC News Mobile app stopped. A sweet UI meets your need for a constant stream of news. This time around you have a few more options to choose for your news instead of the BBC. In addition to the BBC and subsections within the BBC, you’ve got ArsTechnica, Wired, TechCrunch, the Washington Post, Financial Times, Reuters, and more. Hey Lawrence, don’t forget to add a certain Windows Phone site to the tech section!

After adding your news you’ll see the latest articles, most read stories, your feeds, and sections. From there you can read away. Orange, black and white theme? We’re digging it. It’s a color combo you don’t see often enough.

If you do join the public beta be sure to send any bugs you find or suggestions you have to Lawrence. That’s like an unspoken rule of joining one. Or maybe it’s a made up rule for us. Either way hit him up on Twitter or go the UserVoice for the app.

Paper Boy is available for Windows Phone 8. It’s a free, public beta. You can get it in the Store, use the QR code below, or swipe to the right in our app.